------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/ Debian Project News debian-public...@lists.debian.org January 31st, 2011 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2011/02/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's second issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include: * Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" to be released this weekend * Join the DebConf team * Bits from the Security Team * Debunking myths about Debian's firmware (non-)removal * Updated Debian GNU/Linux: 5.0.8 released * Debian Installer 6.0 RC2 released * Cross-distro Application Installer * On the maintainability of Ruby * Bits from Debian GIS * Debian Project at several conferences and trade fairs * Further "This week in Debian" interviews * ... and much more. Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" to be released this weekend Release Manager Neil McGovern announced the target release date of Debian 6.0 [1] "Squeeze" on the weekend of the 5th and 6th of February. Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" will finally arrive as a stable release! Final work towards this has begun including preparations forrelease parties [2] all over the world! 1 : http://lists.debian.org/20110118193635.gc4...@halon.org.uk 2 : http://wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartySqueeze For those from the community who are waiting impatiently for the release, news.debian.net [3] provides a countdown banner [4]. As the release process takes time, members of the Debian Project will provide live comments and interesting facts via Debian's official identi.ca account [5]. 3 : http://news.debian.net/2011/01/22/join-us-in-the-countdown-to-squeeze/ 4 : http://news.debian.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/squeeze_countdown.png 5 : http://identi.ca/debian One interesting number has already been posted: in the two years of development of Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" the Debian Project has closed 149,862 bugs [6]. Thank you everyone for this fantastic work! 6 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/bugs-closed-for-squeeze Join the DebConf team --------------------- DebConf [7] is a yearly conference for the Debian community. Like everything else in Debian, DebConf is run completely by volunteers. Organising a conference is a lot of work, as you might imagine, so it is no surprise that the DebConf team is eager to have people help out. As Richard Darst writes: "DebConf is a huge process [8], and there are many things we could use help on. People come and go, and are usually overworked after a year or two -- so we would love new people to get involved. If you have new ideas, we'd love to hear about them and we can discuss if they'd work and how to make them happen. And by the way, if you are looking for a good way to get involved with Debian and don't know where to start, this might be among the best options!" 7 : http://www.debconf.org/ 8 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/01/msg00004.html Bits from the Security Team --------------------------- Thijs Kinkhorst sent some bits from the Debian Security Team [9] reporting about the group's meeting at the Linux Hotel [10] in Essen, Germany. Among the things they discussed were various improvements to the team work-flow, particularly regarding the release process of Debian Security Advisories - redesigned from the ground up; a longer security support for Debian stable - still a proposal - and backports security support. The report also mentions various other interesting topics such as "Beta testing" of security updates, a README.test file to include into packages to explain how its functionality can be tested, and the problem of some specific packages which are difficult to handle because they include a lot of source packages. The mail ends with a call for volunteers. More details can be read on the fullminutes of the meeting [11]. 9 : http://lists.debian.org/201101232332.11736.th...@debian.org 10 : http://www.linuxhotel.de/ 11 : http://wiki.debian.org/DebianSecurity/Meetings/2011-01-14 In related news, Simon Paillard from the Debian mirrors team reported news for sponsors of Debian mirrors [12]. One interesting element was his request for help to provide more official mirrors of the security archive. He's especially interested in new official mirrors in South America, Asia, and Africa. 12 : http://lists.debian.org/20110126221211.GA8460@toshi Debunking myths about Debian's firmware (non-)removal ----------------------------------------------------- Noticing that Debian's recent announcement about releasing Debian 6.0 [13] "Squeeze" with a completely free Linux kernel seems to have been widely misunderstood, Debian Developer Alexander Reichle-Schmehl debunked some myths about the (non-)removal of firmware [14]. For example, the claim that "Debian removed all firmware files from its kernels" . The short answer to that claim is no. "Debian will be uninstallable (sic) for many users" (short answer: there arenetinstall [15] images and tarballs [16] for other installation media available); "Ah, those Debian freedom zealots again..." (short answer: it's not only Debian). 13 : http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20101215 14 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/myths-and-facts-about-firmware 15 : http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/ 16 : http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/firmware/ He also explained some of the reasons for the fuss about non-free firmware files, and recommended that people who find it difficult to find the non-free images should just remember two words: "wiki" and "firmware" , as everything needed can be found on thefirmware page of Debian's wiki [17]. 17 : http://wiki.debian.org/Firmware Updated Debian GNU/Linux: 5.0.8 released ---------------------------------------- A new update for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 [18] "Lenny" has been released. This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments to serious problems. 18 : http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110122 Debian Installer 6.0 RC2 released --------------------------------- The second release candidate of the installer for Debian "Squeeze" wasreleased on 22 January [19]. This release includes some fixes, such as correct keyboard configuration for the graphical installer for several languages. The errata [20] collects some details and a full list of known issues. You are encouraged to test the installer and report bugs. Install media and further information are available on the Debian Installer page [21]. 19 : http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2011/20110122 20 : http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata 21 : http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ In related news, Matthew Palmer announced test images of the debian-installer supporting IPv6 [22] (suitable for IPv6-only networks) and test images supporting Wi-Fi Protected Access [23] (WPA). He calls for testers for both images. 22 : http://lists.debian.org/20110121035943.gk3...@hezmatt.org 23 : http://lists.debian.org/20110124104234.gh20...@hezmatt.org Cross-distro Application Installer ---------------------------------- Enrico Zini has published on his blog a report [24] of his participation at the Cross-distro Meeting on Application Installer [25]. The meeting, organised by Vincent Untz [26], was focused on metadata (both from packages and users) and how to share them between distributions or, at least, how to define some standards for this metadata. Enrico has presented debtags [27] and apt-xapian-index [28], two of the most powerful tools for handling package metadata in Debian. As a result of the meeting, there is now a plan to match package names across Linux distributions. 24 : http://www.enricozini.org/2011/debian/appinstaller2011/ 25 : http://distributions.freedesktop.org/wiki/Meetings/AppInstaller2011 26 : http://lists.debian.org/20110127021338.ga18...@upsilon.cc 27 : http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/ 28 : http://www.enricozini.org/sw/apt-xapian-index/ It's also nice to see how Debian's services and projects like screenshot.debian.net [29] (providing screenshots of applications to users and package management frontends), the Debian Description Translation Project [30] (DDTP for short; translating Debian package descriptions into other languages), or debtags [31] (tagging Debian packages for easier search) were welcomed and admired by other representatives. 29 : http://screenshots.debian.net 30 : http://ddtp.debian.net 31 : http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/ On the maintainability of Ruby ------------------------------ The maintainability of Ruby became again [32] topic of discussion, after two of its long-time package maintainers decided to give up on Ruby [33] and related packaging [34]. Lucas Nussbaum explained some of the problems he sees, which make it difficult for distributions to package Ruby and its libraries. Often problems seem to arise due to the different needs of developers and administrators/distributors. The topic was also discussed in an article on Linux Weekly News [35]. How the situation will continue is not yet clear, but even so some progress has been reported. Both maintainers have also said that they will be open to handing over package maintenance of their Ruby related packages to new volunteers. 32 : http://www.debian.org/News/project/2010/12/#7 33 : http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=617 34 : http://paul.luon.net/journal/debian/AlsoGivingUpOnRubyPackaging.html 35 : http://lwn.net/Articles/423732/ Bits from Debian GIS -------------------- The mailing list for general discussion of Geographic Information System (GIS) issues in Debian was moved from Alioth to lists.debian.org [36]. As usual lists.debian.org is also open for non-subscribers, has a more generic name, and can hopefully attract more GIS users and developers in Debian to discuss relevant issues. 36 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-gis/ The Debian GIS Blend has defined a new task "SAR and Earth Observation" on theirtasks page [37] which contains a list of not yet official packages which are potential targets for inclusion into Debian. Feel free to discuss this task or other ideas you might have about the GIS relevant packages on the mailing list mentioned above. 37 : http://blends.alioth.debian.org/gis/tasks Please note that Debian GIS also maintains OpenStreetMap-related packages, together with the Debian OpenStreetMap Team (pkg-osm on Alioth [38]). Feel free to join! 38 : https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-osm/ Debian Project at several conferences and trade fairs ----------------------------------------------------- The Debian project announced [39] that it will be present on several upcoming events and trade fairs [40], including Cloud Expo Europe 2011 [41] in London, UK, FOSDEM [42] in Brussels, Belgium, SCaLE [43] in Los Angeles, USA, CeBIT [44] in Hanover, Germany, and the Chemnitzer Linux-Tage [45] in Chemnitz, Germany. 39 : http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110126 40 : http://www.debian.org/events/ 41 : http://www.debian.org/events/2011/0202-cloudexpoeurope 42 : http://www.debian.org/events/2011/0205-fosdem 43 : http://www.debian.org/events/2011/0225-scale9x 44 : http://www.debian.org/events/2011/0301-cebit 45 : http://www.debian.org/events/2011/0319-linuxtage-chemnitz Further "This week in Debian" interviews ---------------------------------------- Since the last issue of the Debian Project News, one new issue of the [46] "This week in Debian" podcast has been published: an interview with Jonas Smedegaard [47], discussing the Freedom Box. 46 : http://wiki.debian.org/ThisWeekInDebian 47 : http://frostbitemedia.libsyn.com/this-week-in-debian-episode-16 There has also been one further "People behind Debian" interview: withMichael Vogt [48], synaptic and APT developer. 48 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/01/21/people-behind-debian-michael-vogt-synaptic-apt-developer/ Other news ---------- Aurélien Jarno announced the new debian-ports archive signing key [49], which will be used to sign the archive on unofficial ports. 49 : http://lists.debian.org/20110112184950.ga5...@hall.aurel32.net The Debian Administration [50] blog published a how-to about installing an encrypted openvpn on [51] "Lenny" and one about creating dynamic volumes with loop devices [52]. 50 : http://www.debian-administration.org 51 : http://www.debian-administration.org/article/Installing_an_encrypted_openvpn_on_Lenny 52 : http://www.debian-administration.org/article/Creating_dynamic_volumes_with_loop_devices Mike Hommey blogged about changes to the Debian Mozilla team APT archive [53], where test versions of several Mozilla products (like Firefox 3.6 and 4.0) are made available. 53 : http://glandium.org/blog/?p=1529 Raphaël Hertzog noted that unlike other [54] distributions [55], Debian is doing very well [56] "eating its own dog food" , meaning that its infrastructure is running on its own distribution. He congratulated the Debian Systems Administration team [57] for keeping more than 140 servers [58] running Debian. 54 : http://lwn.net/Articles/422710/ 55 : http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mandrivauser.de%2F 56 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/01/24/debian-is-eating-its-own-dog-food-more-than-ever/ 57 : http://dsa.debian.org/ 58 : http://db.debian.org/machines.cgi Cyril Brulebois published Debian XSF News [59] summarising many recent events around X.org packaging in Debian. 59 : http://blog.ikibiki.org/2011/01/21/DXN-2/ Yves-Alexis Perez requested a crypto declaration file number from the French authorities [60]. The number is 1101027 and he's made scans of the documents [61] available too. 60 : http://bugs.debian.org/610872 61 : http://people.debian.org/~corsac/anssi/ New Debian Contributors ----------------------- 3 applicants have been accepted [62] as Debian Developers, 1 applicant has been accepted [63] as Debian Maintainer, and 3 people have started maintaining packages [64] since the previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Kamal Mostafa, Scott Howard, Kai Wasserbäch, Vincent Legout, Christer Edwards, Rico Tzschichholz, and Krzysztof Klimonda into our project! 62 : https://nm.debian.org/nmlist.php#newmaint 63 : http://lists.debian.org/e1phye1-0001ae...@franck.debian.org 64 : http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release --------------------------------------------------------- According to the Bugs Search interface of the Ultimate Debian Database [65], the upcoming release, Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" , is currently affected by 8 release-critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily solved or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, only about 5 release-critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen! 65 : http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi There are also more detailed statistics [66] as well as some hints on how to interpret [67] these numbers. 66 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats/#2011-04 67 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats Important Debian Security Advisories ------------------------------------ Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): wireshark [68], libsmi [69], mydms [70], pimd [71], tor [72], dbus [73], request-tracker3.6 [74], openoffice.org [75], hplip [76], linux-2.6 [77], exim4 [78] and freetype [79]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 68 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2144 69 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2145 70 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2146 71 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2147 72 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2148 73 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2149 74 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2150 75 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2151 76 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2152 77 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2153 78 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2154 79 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2155 Debian's Backports Team releases advisories for these packages: egroupware (removal) [80], kvm (removal) [81], request-tracker3.8 [82] and openoffice.org [83]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 80 : http://lists.debian.org/20110115153937.ga10...@edna.deb.at 81 : http://lists.debian.org/20110115162646.ga15...@edna.deb.at 82 : http://lists.debian.org/201101240810.01018.w...@cyconet.org 83 : http://lists.debian.org/20110127201221.gc12...@rene-engelhard.de Please note that these are a selection of the more important security advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the security mailing list [84] (and the separate backports list [85] and volatile list [86]) for announcements. 84 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ 85 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/ 86 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce New and noteworthy packages --------------------------- The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently (among others [87]): 87 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg * accountsservice -- query and manipulate user account information [88] * amqp-tools -- command-line utilities for interacting with AMQP servers [89] * clipit -- lightweight GTK+ clipboard manager [90] * d-itg -- distributed Internet traffic generator [91] * focuswriter -- fullscreen, distraction-free writing program [92] * ministat -- simple tool for statistical comparison of data sets [93] * nagios-plugin-check-multi -- run Nagios checks as a group [94] * rdfind -- find duplicate files utility [95] * xdeb -- cross-build tool for Debian packages [96] Please note that due to the freeze of the upcoming Debian 6.0 [97] "Squeeze" acceptance of new packages has almost ceased. 88 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/accountsservice 89 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/amqp-tools 90 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/clipit 91 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/d-itg 92 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/focuswriter 93 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ministat 94 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/nagios-plugin-check-multi 95 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rdfind 96 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xdeb 97 : http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100806 Want to continue reading DPN? ----------------------------- Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the contributing page [98] to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at debian-public...@lists.debian.org [99]. 98 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 99 : mailto:debian-public...@lists.debian.org This issue of Debian Project News was edited by David Paleino, Francesca Ciceri, Jeremiah C. Foster, David Prévot and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [100]. 100 : mailto:debian-public...@lists.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-news-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110131161538.gk30...@melusine.alphascorpii.net
